AI Evidence, Litigation & Professional Legal Ethics

US Attorney Fictitious Citation Case

Attorneys submitted court filings containing fictitious judicial decisions and citations fabricated by generative artificial intelligence, and continued to provide inaccurate materials after being challenged. The court imposed sanctions accordingly.

Sanctions order against lawyers and their firm

• Two lawyers and their firm were jointly and severally sanctioned USD 5,000, rather than USD 5,000 each or compensatory damages to the airline.
• They were ordered to send the order and specified materials to their client Roberto Mata and the judges falsely identified as authors of fabricated cases.

Australia: Suspected AI-Assisted Character Reference

At sentencing, the judge suspected the defendant’s brother’s character reference had used a large language model or machine translation and gave it very little weight. Its AI origin was not established.

Sentencing Judgment

• The court gave the reference very little weight without conclusively finding it was AI-generated.
• The wholly suspended sentence of 21 months and 15 days and AUD 6,000 fine punished the underlying criminal offence, not AI use.

Colombia Judicial Use of ChatGPT Case

A lower-court judge included ChatGPT responses in the reasoning of a judgment. The Constitutional Court found that the judge had independently decided the matter prior to querying the model, upholding the validity of the proceedings while establishing standards for judicial AI use including transparency, verification, privacy, and human control.

Constitutional Court Judgment

• The Court held that generative AI did not displace the judge's independent decision-making in the specific proceeding.
• The Court observed deficiencies in transparency and accountability regarding the manner in which the tool was used.

South Africa: Fabricated Citations and Verification Duties

After fabricated authorities were submitted, the court refused leave to appeal, required the firm to bear the costs of two additional hearings and referred the matter to the Legal Practice Council. The court discussed AI research risks but did not establish the source of the erroneous citations.

High Court Judgment

• Leave to appeal was refused.
• The firm was ordered to pay the costs of the two additional hearings, and the matter was referred to the Legal Practice Council.

India ANI v. OpenAI Case

On 24 July 2026, the Delhi High Court dismissed ANI’s interim-injunction application on the record before it. Its prima facie conclusions on fair dealing and alleged output infringement do not determine the merits at trial.

Interim injunction refused; merits unresolved and latest appeal status unverified

• On the interim record, the court accepted prima facie fair dealing arguments under Indian law and found insufficient evidence for alleged substantial similarity, memorisation or reproduction in outputs.
• The court refused interim relief and expressly left the merits for final adjudication.

Model & Platform Governance

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AI Contracts & Disputes

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